Lisa Miller

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With health-care battle not yet over, Obama must reach out to religious leaders

June 28, 2012 By Lisa Miller

At the funeral of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy in August 2009, Boston’s Cardinal Sean Patrick O’Malley pulled President Obama aside for a quiet word. It was a sign of things to come: the first failure of the president to understand the moral dimensions of his health-care proposal. The bill that has become known by its opponents as “Obamacare” […]

Filed Under: On Faith, Washington Post Tagged With: Barack Obama, Healthcare, Lisa Miller, Obamacare, Supreme Court

Catholics caught between bishops, Obama’s birth control mandate

May 24, 2012 By Lisa Miller

Mommy and daddy are fighting, and the anguished children don’t know where to turn. This is the state of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States today. A small group of very conservative bishops has hijacked the church, or at least the public voice of the church. The bishops are playing the role of […]

Filed Under: On Faith, Washington Post Tagged With: Barack Obama, birth control, catholicism, Catholics

Obama and Romney offer differing views of God

May 17, 2012 By Lisa Miller

People always ask, “What would Jesus do?,” but in America today, it’s impossible to know. And that’s because there are (at least) two prevailing views of God at work in our public and political conversation. It would not be an exaggeration to say that when you pull the lever this November, you will not just […]

Filed Under: On Faith, Washington Post Tagged With: Barack Obama, God, Lisa Miller, Mitt Romney, Mormonism

“I Want to Be Like Jesus.”

May 6, 2012 By Lisa Miller

Cornel West is a self-proclaimed prophet who believes in the virtues of love and justice. But in his own life, he can’t seem to find either. In November 2007, Cornel West got onstage at the Apollo Theater in Harlem and before a hollering crowd of more than a thousand people, with much arm-­waving and wrist-flapping, along with […]

Filed Under: New York Magazine Tagged With: activism, Barack Obama, Christianity, Cornel West, Jesus, Lisa Miller

Obama’s embrace of gay marriage makes for a spiritual Mother’s Day

May 1, 2012 By Lisa Miller

When President Obama threw his support behind same-sex marriage, he did something much more than please the members of the LGBT community and the people who love them. He gave hope and encouragement to millions of Americans struggling to do right by their children in unconventional or nontraditional families by implicitly asserting “as a practicing Christian” […]

Filed Under: On Faith, Washington Post Tagged With: Barack Obama, Bible, gay marriage, Lisa Miller, marriage, Mother's Day

The religion and politics of division

February 23, 2012 By Lisa Miller

Last week, the Christianity police, in the persons of Rick Santorum and Franklin Graham, came forward to discredit the president’s religious beliefs. First, Santorum called President Obama’s theology “phony”; then, on “Morning Joe,” Graham refused to accept Obama into his Christian band of brothers: “He has said he’s a Christian, so I just have to assume that he […]

Filed Under: On Faith, Washington Post Tagged With: Barack Obama, division, Lisa Miller, politics, Religion, Rick Santorum

How Obama should fight the ‘war on religion’

February 16, 2012 By Lisa Miller

A very wise Trappist monk once told me that unless everyone gets to heaven, no one will. It’s this sense of mutual responsibility — fundamental to the Judeo-Christian tradition — that President Obama needs to emphasize now. It seems far-fetched, from my perspective, to think that God should have any opinion at all about contraceptive […]

Filed Under: On Faith, Washington Post Tagged With: Barack Obama, Conference of Catholic Bishops, Lisa Miller, war on religion

Believers wonder: Where is the old Obama?

August 11, 2011 By Lisa Miller

  “We worship an awesome God in the blue states!” That was Barack Obama in 2004, not yet a U.S. senator, at the Democratic National Convention. And for the next four years, he did something extraordinary. He convincingly articulated a set of American values for the center-left. “Values” were not something God gave to Republicans […]

Filed Under: On Faith, Washington Post Tagged With: Barack Obama, God, Lisa Miller

Christians on both sides of budget battle claim to fight for the poor

August 4, 2011 By Lisa Miller

  After this week’s debt-ceiling deal in Congress, trillions of dollars of spending cuts are on the table. New cuts will sink deep, laying bare the nation’s moral priorities. The tough choices will be left to a new Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction. But let’s imagine for a minute that the Christian Lord could pore over the […]

Filed Under: On Faith, Washington Post Tagged With: Barack Obama, Christianity, Congress, government spending, Lisa Miller

One Nation Under God

December 9, 2010 By Lisa Miller

Powerful new rhetoric on the religious right pits Obama and big government against ‘God’s America’—and promises to galvanize Christians in 2012. On Nov. 30, about a dozen moderate Christian leaders gathered for a meeting in Washington, D.C. Their colleagues on the religious right had been delivering a potent new message about God and country, of fear and […]

Filed Under: Newsweek Tagged With: Barack Obama, Christians, Conservatives, Lisa Miller, Republicans

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About Lisa Miller

Lisa-Miller-Headshot

Lisa Miller is a staff writer at New York magazine. She is the former religion columnist for the Washington Post, former senior editor of Newsweek magazine, and author of "Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife."

In 2014, Lisa Miller was nominated for the National Magazine Award and featured in Best Magazine Writing of 2014.

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NOMINATED FOR THE NATIONAL MAGAZINE AWARD

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